What Size Is the Online Video Advertising Market? Depends Who You Ask

If you’re interested in getting a good sense on the size of the online video advertising market, you’d probably just look at one of the many analyst reports that give numbers on the growth in the industry. The problem is that looking at these reports gives you such a wide range of data, that it’s nearly impossible to find two analysts who agree on similar numbers. I did a quick look up of some of the recent reports and found the following:

• In Dec of 08′, Forrester Research said that the global online video advertising market will reach $7.2B by 2012. (source)

• In June of 08′, eMarketer said the global online video advertising market would be $7.8B by 2012, $3B of which would come from the U.S. alone. (source) Then in August of 08′, eMarketer cut that predicition down to $1B from the U.S. by 2012.

• In May of 08′, IDC said that online video advertising will reach $3.8B by 2012. (source) But in April of 09′, said the same market size will be $600M by 2012. (source)

• In June of 08′, the Kelsey Group said that revenue just from local online video advertising alone would be $1.5B by 2012. (source)

• In Feb of 07′, Borrell Associates predicts that the local online video advertising market will be $5B in 2012. (source)

• In Sept of 08′, LiveRail said the online video advertising market would be $1.3B in 2010. (source)

• In Aug of 08′, Lehman brothers said the online video advertising market would reach $2.4B by 2012. (source)

• In Feb of 08′, Parks Associates said the online video advertising market will be $6.6B in 2012. (source)

Clearly, no one seems to agree on the size of the market and the numbers have huge ranges. Compounding this problem is the fact that many of these reports don’t outline exactly what they consider to be online video advertising revenue. Is it just ads played in the video, or also ads around the video?